Tennis is one of the many underrated sports here at Taylorsville. Despite the lack of student attendance, Aija Moore performs spectacularly.

“A lot of it was that a lot of my family members have played Tennis and they have enjoyed it so much that I figured I’d try it and once I started I kind of fell in love with it,” Moore said.

Ms. Elkins, Tennis Coach, said, “Aija has an extreme desire to improve and be a better tennis player each time she steps on the court. Other players look to her to set the tone of practice each and every day. Aija has improved from playing JV as a sophomore, to varsity as a junior, and now as a senior she one of the leaders on varsity.”

One of her favorite parts of the sport is “probably just getting time to spend with friends, especially since I play doubles I get to spend the entire time on the court with one of my closest friends which is so much more enjoyable because you always have somebody there to support you,” said Moore.
Moore said that the she loves the sport but one thing she’d change is unity.

“I’d like to have more unity because we’re pretty close but you get a few cliches as friend groups so if we could eliminate some of that that would be really nice.”

If she could be any teammate for a week, Moore said,“I’d probably be my doubles partner just so I could kind of see what it’s like to be my partner because then you would know how what I do on the court affects her so I could better help her and better help our team as a whole.”

Sports and academics are hard to juggle, but Aija has shining colors in both. “Aija is extremely smart. She has a 4.0 GPA, while taking several AP classes. She is going for the Academic All-State award, which is awarded to the best students who also play high school sports in the state. She is a very accomplished violinist, she even teaches others how to play the violin. She is the president of FBLA, where she has placed 2ndand 3rd place in the state at FBLA events. I believe she is on Seminary Council too,” said Elkins.

On top of all these activities she still has tennis practice.

Moore said, “We have practice every day after school for about 2 hours and that’s Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and we have our matches on Tuesday, and Thursday sometimes we stay after practice. I’ve stayed as late as 5:30, but I normally leave before 5. So a minimum of 6 hrs per week, and that’s not including matches.”

“[Tennis] kind of keeps me on top of my work because I know I can’t get behind at all, otherwise I’ll be even farther behind because you really don’t have time when you play a sport,” Moore said. “Being motivated in school has never really been a problem with me but it just gives me that extra motivation. I want to keep my grades up so that I have a chance at academic all-state or just like I never want to risk my ability.